Chapter 6 - The Unraveling
By Monday afternoon, the Calloway family didn't just crack; they pulverized.
When money disappears from people whose entire identity is built on vanity, they turn on each other like starved animals.
I was sitting in Marcus Vance’s corner office on Main Street, reviewing Helen’s surgical clearance forms, when Marcus’s assistant knocked and pushed the door open.
"Audrey? Tyler Calloway is in the lobby," she said, looking somewhat alarmed. "He doesn't have an appointment. He’s... well, he’s sweating through his shirt and he says he won't leave until he talks to you."
Marcus glanced up from his desk, a predatory gleam in his eye. "Send him in. And turn on the desk recorder."
Tyler stumbled into the room looking like a man who hadn't slept in seventy-two hours.
The swaggering, arrogant younger brother who used to boast about his crypto gains at Thanksgiving was gone. His eyes were wild, his designer polo was wrinkled, and his hands were trembling violently.
"Audrey, please," he blurted out before the door had even fully swung shut. "You have to pull the fraud complaint on the Mathews County land. You have to!"
"Sit down, Tyler," Marcus said coldly.
Tyler collapsed into the leather wingback chair opposite me. "Audrey, listen to me! I didn't know Reid forged the signature! I swear to God I didn't!"
"You didn't know?" I asked, leaning back, watching him squirm. "Your wife notarized the document, Tyler. She signed her official Commonwealth seal to an instrument purporting to bear my mother’s signature, when my mother wasn't even in the same county."
"Reid told us Helen gave verbal consent over the phone!" Tyler cried, running his hands through his unwashed hair. "He said Helen wanted to help me get the restaurant off the ground! He said she considered me like a second son!"
"Helen barely knows your last name, Tyler."
"You don't understand!" Tyler’s voice broke into a desperate sob. "The hard-money lenders... they aren't a regular bank, Audrey! They’re private equity guys out of Virginia Beach! I already signed personal guarantees for the buildout on the restaurant space! I took a bridge loan of seventy-five thousand dollars based on that two-hundred-and-eighty-thousand-dollar payout clearing today! If that money doesn't hit their account by five o'clock, they’re filing immediate wage garnishments, they’re repossessing Kate’s car, and they’re coming after my house!"
"Then you better start packing, shouldn't you?" I said, without an ounce of warmth in my chest. "Because that money is permanently frozen. The lis pendens has been recorded. That land belongs to Helen Fenwick, and not a single blade of grass on it will ever be touched to pay for your incompetence."
Tyler stared at me, realization dawning on him that I wasn't going to budge. His desperation curdled into fury. "Reid took thirty thousand from your accounts! Why aren't you going after him? He’s the one who planned this! He’s the one who said you were a workhorse who would never notice ten grand here and twenty grand there!"
"Oh, Tyler," Marcus Vance chuckled, leaning forward with his elbows on the blotter. "What makes you think we aren't going after Reid?"
At that exact moment, my phone lit up with a notification from the Henrico County Sheriff’s Department portal.
Reid’s leased Mercedes-Benz—the one he had put in my name six months ago without my explicit consent by using a pre-signed automotive power of attorney—had just been recovered by the repo company from the parking lot of a cheap extended-stay motel near the airport.
Tyler's phone buzzed simultaneously. He glanced at the screen, and his face went entirely gray.
"Kate's notary commission," Tyler whispered, his eyes wide with horror. "The Secretary of the Commonwealth just suspended it pending criminal investigation. The sheriff’s department just served her with an appearance warrant."
"You have ten seconds to leave this office, Tyler," Marcus said, standing up. "Before I have the bailiff on the first floor escort you out in handcuffs."
Tyler scrambled to his feet, knocking his chair back, and fled through the mahogany doors without looking back.
I took a deep breath, looking out over the Richmond skyline.
"How is Helen doing?" Marcus asked gently, his tone transforming instantly from ruthless prosecutor to protective family friend.
"She had her surgery three hours ago," I said, a genuine feeling of relief finally touching my chest. "Dr. Reynolds said the infection was contained just in time. The reconstructive work went perfectly. She’s awake, she’s eating real food, and she asked if she could have her watercolor paints brought to the room."
"And Reid?"
"He's been calling my phone every seven minutes from a burner number," I said, setting the device face-down on the desk. "He left a voicemail twenty minutes ago."
"Did you listen to it?"
"Yes."
In the voicemail, Reid hadn't been screaming. He had been weeping.
He had begged me to remember our wedding in the Outer Banks. He had claimed that he was 'depressed,' that his architectural business had collapsed quietly eight months ago, that his mother had pressured him constantly to prove he was as successful as I was. He had blamed Pamela. He had blamed Tyler. He had blamed the economy. He had blamed everyone except the man who stood in the mirror and decided to let an old woman rot on a kitchen floor so he could eat lobster.
May you like
"Delete the voicemail, Audrey," Marcus advised quietly. "The commonwealth attorney has already signed the warrant. Detective Ramos is picking him up tonight."
***
